Two posts in one here, but the odd relationships seemed too erie. On the 1 hand our fembot making cousins in the land o' the rising sun have upped the ante with the new Actroid DER2 feminine guide robot complete with Hello Kitty garb.

Her maker Kokoro, a Sanrio Group company specializing in the design and manufacture of robots, unveiled Actroid DER2 at Sanrio headquarters in Tokyo on October 4. Her moto? "She is Robot Working Girl"

And on the other hand we have a new indie film going around the festival circuit named "Run Robot Run!" Can you pick out the robot in this picture? The movie synopsis reads as follows:

The film imagines a humorous office culture of the future where robots and humans coexist. Kent Weston's carefully regimented existence is upset when he is replaced at his job by Adam, a Ken-doll-perfect robot. When Kent's office crush Allison becomes attracted to Adam, Kent formulates a plan. With the help of his comic office side-kick Garth, he sets out to prove to Allison that a machine can never replace a real man. In his efforts to destroy his robotic competition, Kent is confronted by his own mechanical nature. To win Allison's heart he will need to do the one thing that humans find most difficult - change.

While no actual robots were used in the purely fictional piece, it highlights some of the challenges we humans will face. Especially for those of us living out our meager lives in today's corporate cubicle farms this film goes to show where we are lead when we regiment everything into a repeatable process.